A Federal High Court sitting in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital has dismissed a suit filed by King Bubaraye Dakolo of Ekpetiama Kingdom against Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) and six others that included the Attorney General of the Federation and the Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission.
The suit with no: FHC/YNG/CS/8/2025, sought to hold Shell accountable for four decades of oil spills, gas flaring, and the systematic destruction of rivers, forests, and farmlands across the Gbarain oil fields before the company’s controversial divestment of its onshore assets to Renaissance African Energy Limited.
The court presided over by Justice Ayo Emmanuel on July 17, 2026, dismissed the suit on four grounds namely; Failure to comply with statutory conditions precedent under the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 and the Upstream Petroleum Remediation Funds Regulations 2022 and the statute of limitations under the Public Officers Protection Act and the Limitation Law of Bayelsa State.
The court further gave its reasons for dismissing the to include; the characterisation of the fundamental rights framing as secondary to tortious claims; and he consequent sustaining of the defendants’ preliminary objections.
However, one of the leading civil society organisations (CSOs) in the country on the aegis of ‘Health of Mother Earth Foundation’ has vehemently rejected this dismissal of the suit and stressed the need for King Dakolo, the Ekpetiama people, and their legal team to pursue an appeal to the highest court in the land.
HOMEF particularly expressed concerns about the reasons adduced by the court, stressing that where aged oil infrastructure remains in use, noxious gas continues to flare, and where contamination has not been remediated.
HOMEF further said that the injury is not historical, but ongoing and framing decades of unaddressed harm as a series of expired causes of action is a judicial gift to extractive corporations and a betrayal of the communities bearing their costs.
Speaking after the court’s judgement, HOMEF executive director, Rev Nnimmo Bassey noted with grave concern that every of the grounds were procedural, stressing that not a single finding went to the merits of the environmental harm Ekpetiama people have suffered for over six decades.
According to Bassey; “The Federal Government, through the Minister of Petroleum Resources, the NUPRC, and the Attorney General were co-defendant in that suit for a reason, because their approval of a divestment that circumvented the Petroleum Industry Act’s environmental obligations makes them complicit in what the Ekpetiama people have endured”.
Also speaking, the legal officer of HOMEF, Onome Etisioro stated that Shell’s obligations to the Ekpetiama people did not lapse with a court ruling.
Etisioro said; “Nigerian jurisprudence has long needed a definitive ruling on what constitutes a continuing environmental wrong and the resulting ecocides that occur, and on whether limitation statutes designed for ordinary civil disputes can be applied without modification to the slow, cumulative violence of oil extraction.
“The Ekpetiama case was built to force those questions, but it was dispatched before the judiciary could answer them; the communities of the Niger Delta are the poorer for it. Every dismissal on a technicality is a deferral of the environmental jurisprudence this country urgently needs,” he said.
The court judgement is the latest of a troubling pattern in Nigerian environmental litigation that include cases of profound public consequence, carrying the weight of decades of documented harm that were dismissed on procedural and technical grounds before a court ever reaches the substance. The Nigerian jurisprudence has long needed a definitive ruling on what constitutes a continuing environmental wrong and the resulting ecocide, and on whether limitation statutes designed for ordinary civil disputes can be applied without modification to the slow, cumulative violence of oil extraction.
HOMEF commended the legal counsel Chuks Uguru and the Ekpetiama legal team for their commitment to pursue the matter through every available avenue.
It stated that the appellate courts would have the opportunity to examine whether the procedural bars applied served justice or obstructed it.
HOMEF called on legal advocates, environmental groups, and human rights organisations across the Niger Delta and beyond to support the appeal process that may arise with expertise, solidarity, and visibility.
